Stanley
Kubrick

BIOGRAPHY

I would not think of
quarreling with your interpretation nor offering any
other, as I have found it always the best policy to
allow the film to speak for itself.

“You
don’t have to be a nice person to be
extremely talented.You can be a shit and be talented
and, conversely, you can be the nicest guy
in the world and not have any talent.Stanley Kubrick is a talented
shit,” quipped Kirk Douglas after working
on Spartacus
with Stanley Kubrick as the director.

Stanley
Kubrick butted heads with many
well-respected people in Hollywood and he
always demanded respect when he was on the
set. Through his unique directing style and
groundbreaking movies, Kubrick managed to
separate his works from “typical”
Hollywood films. As a result, the way
audiences think and interpret movies has
been changed forever.Stanley Kubrick truly is a legend
that will never be a forgotten name in the
film industry.

Stanley
Kubrick was born in the borough of Manhattan
at 307 Second Avenue in Lying-In Hospital on
Thursday, July 26, 1928.At the time Stanley’s father,
Jacques, and mother, Gertrude, resided at
2160 Clinton Avenue, a six-story brick
apartment building.Jacques was a local doctor and
therefore the family was well off and lived
in several nice places in New York. Stanley
had one sibling, Barbara Mary, who was born
on May 21, 1934.

His
parents could tell their son was not
utilizing his full potential.

Stanley
started his schooling in September of 1934
at the local public school, P.S. 3.Throughout his years in grammar
school and up through high school Stanley
was absent quite a bit from school, and in
the spring of 1945 he was reported to the
attendance bureau for absenteeism.His parents could tell their son was
not utilizing his full potential.

After
trying home school for a session and then
realizing their son was getting U’s
(Unsatisfactory) in several different
courses (including Personality, Works and
Plays Well with Others, Completes Work, Is
Generally Careful, Respects the Rights of
Others, and Speaks Clearly), the Kubricks’
decided to send their son out to California
to live with his Uncle Martin Perveler.
Martin was an entrepreneur who started a
chain of pharmacies on the West Coast.
Through numerous wise business investments
Martin eventually became a multimillionaire.It’s believed that Dr. Kubrick felt
time on the West Coast could do the curious
boy some good.

Stanley
came back a year later and returned to his
new school P.S. 90 for eighth grade. During
this time, he had scored above average on
the reading and intelligence tests given out
by the New York school system. His parents
and the school both saw this mysterious boy
as untapped potential.

To
stimulate outside interests, Dr. Kubrick let
Stan use his Graflex camera, introduced him
to his library of literature and taught him
to play chess.These hobbies would eventually be
vital to unlocking the potential this young
boy had bottled up inside.They would stay with him the rest of
his life.

Although
his attendance at school was still very
poor, Stanley never failed to miss a movie
at the local theaters.

After
moving many times between 1942 and
graduation from William Howard Taft High
School, Stan met someone in the Grand
Concourse who also shared his love for
photography.This someone was Marvin Traub.With Marvin’s own dark room in his
bathroom, it was much easier for these two
ambitious boys to pursue their hobby quite
regularly.While most boys at the time belonged
to a Social Athletic Club (SAC’s) of some
sort, Marvin and Stanley did not.

Donald
Silverman, an outgoing fellow resident of
the Grand Concourse had this to say about
Stanley. “Stanley was a very private
person.He wasn’t invited to play stickball
with us.He wasn’t invited to play roller
hockey with us.He may not have wanted to, but he was
so private that we never asked him.It was a very close-knit
neighborhood.The fellas grew up on the Concourse.Everybody knew everybody else’s
parents…Stanley and Marvin were really
never in the group that I was in.I was friendly with Marvin Traub and
Stanley Kubrick-I crossed
boundaries…Marvin’s keen interest in
photography captivated Kubrick’s
interest.”

At
William Howard Taft High School Stanley was
a member of the band and the photography
club where he was assigned to take pictures
of sporting events and school sponsored
events for the school magazine.Although his attendance at school was
still very poor, Stanley never failed to
miss a movie at the local theaters. He would
go to the Loew’s Paradise and RKO Fordham
twice a week to see double features.

Kubrick
told Bernard Weinraub of the New York Times that watching poorly made films sparked his
interests. He stated “One of the things of
seeing run-of-the-mill Hollywood films eight
times a week, was that many of them were so
bad.Without
even beginning to understand what the
problems of making films were, I was taken
with the impression that I could not do a
film any worse than the ones I was seeing.I was seeing, I also felt I could, in fact, do them a lot
better.”

The
youngster captured a great set of photos
that seemed to symbolize the nation’s
feeling of despair and sold the photos to Look
magazine for twenty dollars.

Stanley
Kubrick was also a member of his school’s
band (called the Taft Assembly), in the
percussion section.With this love he joined a few other
band members and formed the Taft Swing Band.It was there that Stan befriends
Robert M. Sandelman.Stanley also started to explore his
artistic side by enrolling (in February of
1943) in a Saturday morning art class at the
Art Students League of New York and
watercolorist class (in high school) taught
by Anne Goldthwaite.

In
Stanley’s senior year he continued to take
photographs on a regular basis.After the death of the President FDR, Stanley happened to
stumble upon a chance encounter with a
newspaper salesman (holding a paper with the
news of the tragedy) who looked quite
distraught.The ever-ambitious youngster took full advantage of the
opportunity and captured a great set of
photos that seemed to symbolize the
nation’s feeling of despair.He sold the photos to Look
magazine for twenty-five dollars.He continued to take photos for the
magazine the rest of his senior year and was
published quite frequently.This opportunity would end up
jump-starting his artistic inhibitions and
provide a job for Stanley after high school.